Heating oil price history, 25 years, inflation-adjusted

How the table is built: EIA publishes residential heating oil monthly, mostly for the heating-season months (January to March and October to December), and publishes no annual figure. Each bar is the mean of the months EIA published in that calendar year, deflated by the BLS CPI-U annual average to August 2026 prices. 2026 holds January to March only.

What the 25 years show

• 2008 ($4.95 real, $3.18 nominal). WTI crude's daily spot peaked at $145.31/bbl on 3 July 2008, between heating seasons, so the residential readings EIA took that year sit well below the summer crude spike. EIA
• 2011 to 2014 plateau, peaking in 2012 ($5.87 real). The highest calendar-year average in this table in today's dollars, higher than 2008 or 2022.
• 2014 ($5.31) to 2016 ($3.17). The crude collapse took the nominal average from $3.76 to $2.27, a 40% fall in two years.
• 2022 ($5.38 real). Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The highest weekly national reading of that period came later, $5.90/gal in the week of 2022-11-07.
• 2026 ($4.40 real, January to March). The latest weekly national reading is $6.14/gal (week of 2026-11-02), above every weekly figure EIA published before this season (series from October 1990), including the $5.90 of 2022-11-07. EIA

Where today sits against 25 years

Over the 25 full years 2001 to 2025 the median annual average, in August 2026 dollars, is $3.98/gal; the middle half of years fell between $3.70 and $4.70. Today's weekly $6.14 is above every annual average in that span, including 2012's $5.87. A single week is not a year, so read this as where the current price sits, not as a forecast for the winter. EIA BLS

Cross-references

• National average detail
• Why heating oil prices rise
• Heating oil vs crude oil
• Crude shock scenario